


Wayward Reflections

by Sheliak



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Claremont-Era, F/F, Fix-It, Identity Issues, Mojoverse, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29270556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/pseuds/Sheliak
Summary: Madelyne Pryor never wants to be powerless again. To that end, she's willing to bargain with Spiral of the Wildways.
Relationships: Madelyne Pryor & Freedom Force, Madelyne Pryor/Rita Wayward, Madelyne Pryor/Spiral
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Wayward Reflections

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



Even before the assassins showed up, Madelyne Pryor had not been having a good day. 

But at least neither were the assassins. 

“Clumsy, clumsy,” the six-armed woman singsonged. She danced, and the Marauder’s bullets danced around her, stretched, consolidated into a line and broke into dust in her hands. She blew it towards him, and as he cursed and reached for his eyes, the dancer grabbed Maddy and jumped—through the window, and through something else.

* * *

They landed outside—it even looked like the same place—but the light was wrong. As if hours had passed. 

“Spiral, where were you? You’re the one who wanted to get out here early, and then you skip out on the fight—” The man stopped, abruptly. “Civilian’s alive?” He sounded a little surprised, which was annoying of him. “Good job, Spiral.” 

Ah: not surprised in her so much as in her rescuer. Maybe she should be flattered that this Spiral had spent the effort on her. 

“Destiny will be happy, anyway,” he went on. And then, putting a jaunty expression on what she could see of his mostly-masked face, “Freedom Force at your service, ma’am.” 

Freedom Force, huh. No one she’d heard anything good of. But you didn’t look a gift rescue in the mouth, so Maddy offered her hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Madelyne Pryor.”

* * *

The hospital, of course, felt the need to argue. As far as their records said, Madelyne Pryor was a hallucination, or possibly a lie, and what they had on their hands was a confusing Jane Doe. 

Freedom Force, to Maddy’s relief, took that as a third reason she shouldn’t stay at the hospital—after the risk to their nursing staff and whatever interest their leader had in her. Because their leader was interested.

She was doubly relieved. She meant no ill to those people—well, maybe the doctors who’d been so convinced nothing she remembered was real; the poor nurse who’d died in her bedroom, at least, had deserved better—but Maddy had had enough hospitals to last her a lifetime. 

A dubiously ethical government super-team would probably be an improvement.

* * *

After she was settled in the house Freedom Force apparently used as a headquarters—not as big as Xavier’s mansion, but then they weren’t trying to run a school out of it—Maddy decided it was time to see if she could conjure any of the ghosts of her past. Or in less dramatic terms, if any of the phone numbers she had memorized would actually work. 

Under different circumstances, Maddy would’ve gone into town, lost any possible tail, found a pay phone. Today, she didn’t want to risk her merry band of assassins deciding third time was the charm. So she used the house phone and hoped no one was eavesdropping. 

She tried calling home, just in case Scott went back to check on her, and couldn’t even get through. Tried calling her employers—she was still on maternity leave, but surely… Nothing. 

She _knew_ that number. Had it been changed? 

Had someone gone after them too?

Panic wasn’t a useful emotion. So she pressed a hand to the wall and leaned all her weight on it, just a moment, to calm herself. Then she dialed Xavier’s. 

The school had always been a bastion of insanity. With everything as it was, it was the one thing she trusted to still be there. As little as she wanted to mix the students up in this business… 

“Mrs. Pryor? Is everything all right?”

She knew that voice, even if he had too many names for her to be sure what to call him: Michael Xavier when he signed something, Magnus with his friends, _Magneto_ when Scott had to admit he existed—but he’d always been kind to her. 

The whole story came out, the attack and the rescue and waking with her baby gone—not in a tangled rush, but clear and detailed, as if she’d been giving a report. Well, she’d had practice. 

“We can come to get you, if you need it.” 

For a moment, she was tempted. But no. Whether or not she chose to trust this man, she couldn’t risk putting his students in danger. The New Mutants were a tough, scrappy bunch of kids—but they were still kids. Most of them. Xi’an wasn’t, but she had her little brother and sister to worry about, didn’t she?

“No. But tell Scott, and tell the X-Men,” she said. “I’m safe for now, but my son isn’t. They need to know.” Then, “Scott’s not great with phones at the best of times.” Which this wasn’t. “Send a letter. Go in person—even if there’s a fight first he’ll have to talk to you then. Get the word through, however you can.”

She and he were done, but she knew Scott would still fight for his son. He had to, didn’t he?

* * *

Freedom Force was more cooperative with her search for some trace of existence than the hospital had been. Maddy doubted they were usually so benevolent, but she wasn’t arguing. In any case, Cooper’s people could get her access to any records she liked—except, it seemed, the ones she was looking for. 

Nothing to mark her education, or her marriage. 

No record of her son’s birth, either in Alaska (of course there wasn’t any record in Alaska, why had she told the doctors to check there?) or in New York. None of hers, either—anywhere that she could think of. 

Why couldn’t she remember where she’d been born? She should at least know the state. But she didn’t. 

_Calm down, Maddy._

What did she remember? 

She remembered being a kid, being so messed up inside her own head that she couldn’t go to school or even leave her bedroom, sometimes. Her sister Sara had snuck into her room to hold her and sing, hardly above a whisper. It hadn’t helped, but—

She didn’t have a sister. Madelyne Pryor had no siblings, no parents, no one at all. (Not before Scott. And not now after him.) She came from nothing and that was fine by her. A solo act and good with it. 

So why could she picture that girl Sara’s face more clearly than she could her own?

* * *

Of course, there was one last thing to try. She hadn’t yet looked for a trace of the worst day of her life. 378 people dead and not one obituary? That strained belief. 

And she was even right: she found it. 

No pilot named. But the plane— _747-200B, Boing_ —the location, even the cause. She knew those things like she knew the sound of her own voice in her ears, the vibration in her bones when she spoke, when her plane took off—

_No survivors._

378 passengers dead, and 17 crew. Pilot included. 

Maddy couldn’t remember getting drunk in her life. No time like the present to start.

* * *

Maddy woke with a blinding headache, still sweaty in yesterday’s clothes, under a blanket that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke.

There was a pitcher of water on the table, some tablets, a cup. A short, unsigned note: _Destiny wants to talk to you._

She drank it all—limited help with the headache—and took a shower before heading down to the kitchen. As she’d expected, the oldest member of Freedom Force was there, eerie mask replaced with darkened glasses, two cups of tea on the table before her. 

“Sit. One of the cups is yours—choose either one.”

Maddy did, and took the yellow mug—she always had liked yellow. “I don’t suppose you know anything?”

“I ‘see’ the future. The past is as much a mystery to me as to anyone.” Destiny sighed. “And at present, even the future is… warped, I fear, around an event close at hand. One that involves you.” 

“If you can see the future, do you know if…” Her voice stumbled. _Can you see if I’ll survive, if my son will, if I’ll ever find him, if, if, if…_ But she had a feeling that that “event close at hand” wasn’t anything good for her. 

“Both you and your son have futures. Though I fear yours is short, and his—tangled.” Destiny paused. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. Mutants, and their children… we meant to give them long lives; that was part of why…” She waved a hand in a way that suggested the entire building, or perhaps Freedom Force as an institution. “Forgive me; I grow maudlin in my old age, and I worry for my daughter, too.” 

“Your daughter?”

“Rogue, of the X-Men.” Destiny sipped her tea, and the fog on her glasses obscured her expression still more. “It was easier to keep her safe when she was at my side, in the same team. But she chose otherwise, and it has not been entirely for the worse. Had events taken a more probable course, she and her team would have saved your life the other day, instead of mine and Spiral.” 

“This event — is she mixed up in it too, as well as me?” At the old woman’s nod, Maddy added, impulsively, “I don’t see how I could help someone as powerful as her, but if I can, I’ll try. And you…”

“If I have the chance,” Destiny said gently, “I will act to aid your son, as you will for my daughter.”

If it didn’t interfere with her other goals, Maddy thought. But it was the best she’d heard in ages. 

“And as for you yourself…” Destiny paused, meditative. “Ask Spiral. She is not… trustworthy, perhaps. Not reliable. But she is interested in you. And while her aid comes with a price…”

Maddy wouldn’t live long enough to pay it. She nodded, curtly. “I’ll do that,” she said, and rose. 

In the doorway, she paused. “And thank you for telling me what you can see of my future.” She paused, struggling to phrase what she meant—the confirmation that Destiny saw her future, that she existed, that she _mattered_ … “A short life is still a life. And at least I know to make the time I have count.”

* * *

It was easy enough to find Spiral, which—given what little Maddy knew of her—suggested she’d been waiting for the question. And preparing one of her own. 

“Who do you want to be?”

The pilot who seemingly didn’t exist. The healer whose very name proclaimed her limits. The mother of a son who likewise didn’t. The wife of a man who—was he even real either? It wasn’t as if she’d been able to contact her old employers and find out if they really had a grandson, if they remembered attending his wedding.

 _Madelyne._ But was that even her name?

 _I want to be real._ But that sounded so stupid, so forlorn—Pinocchio wanting to turn from wood into flesh—that she didn’t bother saying it aloud. 

“I want to be strong,” she said instead. “Make me someone who can fight those creeps no matter how they try to rig things.” 

Spiral smiled. “Let’s begin.”

* * *

She woke bleary-eyed and sticky, in the midst of Spiral’s strange lab, surrounded by screens and mirrors. 

There was someone else with her. Fine black hair and a face she almost recognized—

“C’mon!” the stranger said. “Don’t just sit there. Run!” 

That should have been harder than it was, considering she’d just been through surgery of some kind. But there was an extra strength in Maddy’s body—or at least, there was once she thought of it. Stiffness and fatigue lasted only long enough to register, and each time her feet hit the ground a bit more than the usual force pushed her up again. _Interesting._

Maybe that was what Spiral had given her—and left her to figure out on her own. Just like that woman, really. 

What was it? Healing, maybe, but a different kind than Anodyne’s, since she still _felt_ pain. (That was good. She couldn’t have stood to be Anodyne again, after everything.)

She reached the doors first, tried to open them, cursed. “They’re locked—”

The other woman came over, glared at them, and shoved at one. 

It fell open, just as if it had only been shut—as if Maddy hadn’t been banging on it to no avail. 

They ran and ran down mirrored halls, and Maddy saw their distorted reflections—herself older, younger, bloodied, furious, hateful, gleeful; and her new friend warped past (or was that into?) recognition.

She wasn’t sure how long they ran; she was still a bit out of it from the surgery, or maybe just from her surroundings. So much noise, so much light, so many images and reflections—it was hard to know what was real, let alone how long anything lasted. They simply ran (and climbed, and dropped down hatches) until the other decided they were done.

“I’m Ricochet Rita,” the other woman finally said, stopped dead in a little room no different from a dozen they’d passed through, even down to the screens and mirrors (mostly broken, or so dirty they might as well be) that lined the upper walls. “Rebel and troublemaker, at your service.” The only working mirror showed her in Revolutionary uniform, and very dashing with it. 

“Madelyne Pryor,” she said. Then, “I—I’m not sure I needed a rescue.” She kept her body out of the line of that mirror. It’d only annoy her if it showed some fainting damsel in distress. 

“Oh, you did.” Rita shrugged. “Or I needed to tweak Spiral’s nose. She thinks she’s the only one of us that matters—or she does if I let her be too long.” She spoke fast and brash as she swung herself down to look in the drawer she’d somehow pulled out of a solid wall, and looked up from that with a disarming grin. “Anyway. Dinner?”

Maddy was starving, as it happened. “Sure.”

* * *

“Careful what you sign around here!” Rita paused. “Or anywhere, really. Read the damn fine print is what I mean. Even if it’s not _in_ print.” She waved her fork for emphasis, and her reflections (they’d left the first room for another; apparently all that one had had going for it was a working not-stove) waved everything from chopsticks to tridents. 

What had Maddy already agreed to? (And what had Rita?)

Rita frowned. “I guess you’re already in, then? Well, so am I. But be careful you don’t get tangled up any further. This place—it’s beautiful, well sometimes, and it can definitely be _fun_ , but it’ll eat you up and spit you out if you give it half a chance.” 

“Sounds like everywhere I’ve ever lived,” Maddy said bitterly. 

Rita laughed. “Then you’ll do fine.”

* * *

Another time—Maddy thought afterwards that it must have been much later: 

“This place is outside real time. I mean, things happen in order! But no one can agree what that order is. It’s like a TV series aired out of order, but different in each house.” 

It sounded maddening. But Rita was still laughing, and her laugh was Spiral’s. 

Still talking, too. “See, anything that happens here is always happening. The good and the bad, the real and the fake. Always.”

So Rita—whatever she had to do with Spiral, if they were the same person or reflections or some kind of kin—was still always here, always as all right as she’d ever be, at her highest point as well as her lowest. 

_Like a highlight reel,_ she thought, and shivered.

(And now _she’d_ be here forever, too. For good, for ill—irrevocable, and all she’d be able to do was decide how she felt about it.

Well. That was what she’d signed up for, apparently, with Spiral. One way or another, she’d have to live with it.)

* * *

They had company in the mirrors now. Shadows, reflections. Rita. Spiral. Her, and— _No. Don’t think of that. Not yet._

“Not much longer,” Rita said ruefully, when she noticed. “Sorry about that. I did hope—” She shook her head. “No time to waste, then.” 

“You got somewhere to be?” 

“Something like that.” Rita sighed, and yanked her sleeve up, revealing a bandaged wound. “Anyway. You can help with this?” 

Her tone added a _do you know?_ to that question. 

“Sure thing,” said Maddy, and did. “Though I would’ve thought she’d give me something flashier.”

Rita frowned. “Me too. That’d be more like her. But maybe she didn’t have much choice. Some humans come with powers built in—mutants, yanno? And she can only change those powers so much. She can change the scale or the direction or whatever, but there’s limits.”

Maybe healing was in Maddy’s nature, in her DNA, a sleeping mutation waiting to be activated. Or maybe healing was just a variant of something else—instead of moving things around, she made bodies move, within themselves. 

(Healing, and the other uses she could make of this: make herself stronger, send enemies to sleep, tear bodies apart as easily as mend them—but she wasn’t going to do that just yet. Not until she had to; not until there was no other option.)

“Kiss for luck,” Rita said when Maddy was done, and followed word with action. Maddy kissed back, and threw her arms around her to make the moment last longer.

And then they split apart, Rita on some mission, her wandering again. Aimless. 

(Might as well appreciate _that_ while it lasted. She wasn’t going to get much chance to be aimless, back in the world.)

* * *

She wandered a long, long time, through shadows and reflections, stories and dreams, before someone grabbed her from behind. She whirled, ready to fight, to lash out with what Spiral had given her—

“Rita?”

“Who’s that?” Spiral asked, a little too sharply. 

If she looked past the arms—the hair was wrong, of course. And the expressions were so different that it was hard to judge the face, though she thought Spiral might be older. 

But their voices were the same. 

Maddy couldn’t quite bring herself to say _no one._ So all she did was shrug. “Never mind. Let’s get started. Maybe your team could use a new member? You can be my reference.” 

And she reached over to take the other woman’s nearest hand in both of hers. Spiral—furious, chaotic Spiral—didn’t pull away.

* * *

Hardly any time at all and Mystique took them all to Dallas, to the doom her lover had seen for their child (and for Rogue’s teammates, though they were an afterthought). 

Maddy didn’t know what she’d think of being on Freedom Force normally, their odd position between hero and villain and cop. But this work—she liked this. The thrill, the danger—the knowledge she was making things _better,_ with her healing or with the enemies she faced. 

(And the worlds saw her, too, like that. Not the nameless victim but Pryor of Freedom Force.) 

She thought her teammates (and wasn’t that strange to realize, that she was one of this gang now?) felt the same. It was in Pyro’s cocky smile when he took down a tyrannosaur that was about to eat two kids, in the Commando’s voice directing the civilians out of danger—even in Spiral’s laugh when the two of them wound up back to back in the fighting. 

Maddy hung around Spiral most of the time, at that. No one else did, after all, and though the other woman would never accept hearing it, even she needed someone to watch her back. Why not Maddy? 

So Maddy was there when Spiral was injured, to heal her wounds; there to laugh when she made a joke no one else dared to see as one. 

And when she slept, a brief nap in between waves of foes, Maddy was there to guard her—and to see that her sleeping face was Rita’s, even though waking they were different. 

_It’s what you do with it that counts,_ Maddy thought, and that was strangely reassuring.

* * *

“You all right?” she asked when Spiral woke. It was the kind of thing you said, to friends. But not, apparently, the kind of thing Spiral was used to hearing. 

Luckily Spiral preferred to rant than to avenge the insult of Maddy’s concern. The time-storm, it seemed, was getting to her—not in the obvious ways it was for the rest of them. But it was interfering with her sorcery, and with her sight, hiding the winding ways of time and space from her, tangling around her feet and hands when she tried to dance.

Maddy thought of Rita, and said, “Well, isn’t life best when it’s unpredictable? Not many thrills if you can see everything coming.” 

Spiral laughed Rita’s laugh, and agreed with her.

* * *

They went inside Forge’s Aerie, all of them together; and when things got bad the Blob took Mystique and ran, and Spiral was simply left behind, spat out by whatever cosmic power wanted to eat the rest of them.

So Pryor of Freedom Force was left with seven X-Men and a stray reporter, to find their leader and the sorcerer who’d started all this mess (if not all of hers), and hear what had to be done. 

Somehow, it didn’t surprise her that it would take a blood sacrifice. Those were the kind of rules sorcery always had, and if they didn’t tell you that up front they were lying. (As Loki had been, all that time ago.)

But the numbers didn’t quite add up. A loophole big enough for just one survivor.

Maddy didn’t think of taking that place for herself, even for a moment. Destiny hadn’t seen a long future for her, after all. (And she didn’t want to live at someone else’s expense.) 

But some of these others had friends and family waiting for them—and some of those were people she knew. So before she made her last speech—to the world, to her son’s father—she had someone else to talk to. “Rogue. Your mom—” 

Rogue shook her head. “I know this’ll hurt them both. But if I live, someone else dies. And if one person here gets out alive today, it should be the one who isn’t a superhero.”

 _Superhero._ That’s what she was, today. Not a civilian, not a bystander, not a villain. 

Put that in her fucking obituary.

(But at least it would be a good one.)

* * *

Madelyne Pryor died a hero. That was how her story ended, on Neal Conan’s camera and on Mojo’s. 

And then, of course, it began again. (On no cameras, perhaps ever again. The others liked that; it suited them, to be able to hide so completely. Maddy wasn’t sure she felt the same: at least if she was seen, even spied on, she knew some part of her was real.

But she’d gotten out of Spiral’s bargain: no more watchers. And that was a triumph. Rita would have said so, she thought.)

The X-Men opened their arms to her, and she fit into their team as if she belonged there. Maybe she did.

Maddy took to the Reavers’ tech as she’d taken twice to powers, Loki’s poisoned gift and Spiral’s. Here was power, yet again—power that could reach anywhere in the world. She hunted her enemy, tracing words and knowledge like Wolverine did scents, until she could see his shadow and his footprints. 

And so—almost by accident—she saw Jean Grey’s face in motion for the first time, more like hers than Rita’s had been like Spiral’s, and fell into sleep with the rage and betrayal of that realization twisting her thoughts. 

And a demon came to her in her dreams, and she was tempted by what he offered. She was angry—at so many things, so many people, but Scott was certainly one of them. 

But she remembered Spiral’s twisting paths, her whirling feet and those six hands weaving patterns through the air, and she thought: _If he offers you five paths, there’s at least one more he doesn’t want you to see._

That sounded like Spiral’s voice, too, in her head, or maybe Rita’s. 

Well. What were her options? 

Pick the little girl she was beginning to think she’d never been, despite those few clear memories. Pick the face that reflected her _now_ back like a mirror. Pick the pilot she’d been before _he_ walked into her life, before everything went wrong. Pick the gentle healer, the happy dream before that turned bad too. Pick the demon that glared from his thumbnail with a face like all her rage incarnate. 

_Say no. That’s also a choice._

Or notice what he wasn’t offering. All those possibilities, and there was one he’d left out: Pryor of Freedom Force, the woman Spiral had remade. 

It had been such a short part of her life. But she’d been on Freedom Force longer than she’d been Anodyne. Why wasn’t that a fingernail? 

(Even dreaming, that thought almost made her laugh.)

She couldn’t trust Spiral either, of course. She’d always known that, even before she met Rita. But Maddy thought she’d rather take her chances with the dancer’s madness than with this demon. 

Even with her damn screens. (At least those showed _her,_ and not Jean Grey.)

“I’ve already got power,” she told the demon. “And I’ll do what I like with it.”

* * *

And she woke, alone and unchanged, to see herself absent from her own security camera feeds as usual. 

Maddy patted the nearest machine, a little rough. (Didn’t do it any harm.) Checked the feeds—new information from New York. She wasn’t as angry, now, to see those faces. She’d deal with all her problems in time—and on _her_ terms, not some purple aardvark demon’s. Save her son, destroy her enemy. Put an end to things with Scott, and with her doppelgänger. She could do that, now. She could reach anywhere. 

_Anywhere in this world, at least._

Hah. Maybe she’d leave Spiral a message. Maybe ask her to pass one on to Irene and Raven, while she was at it. They could use knowing their daughter was alive. … At that, better deliver the message herself. But she could _do_ that. 

Maddy didn’t have to stay here watching and never do anything else, even if Roma’s shrouding gave her that option. She could act her will in the world.

She had a web as wide as Spiral’s, here. She had the Reavers’ tech, and Spiral’s twisted gift, and all her own strength and will. Power. 

Maybe they’d dance again. 

(Maybe, even, she and Rita would.)


End file.
